


Rage, rage against the dying of the light

by Icelandic_Flutterby



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Animal Death, Animal dies of old age, Background Character Death, Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/M, Family Feels, One Shot, Tragedy, do not copy to another side
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:47:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23711227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Icelandic_Flutterby/pseuds/Icelandic_Flutterby
Summary: Elwing lives through a tragedy, as a toddler, and then grows up. She's angry, as a rule, but she knows some happiness.
Relationships: Elwing & Celeborn, Elwing & Galadriel, Eärendil & Elwing (Tolkien), Eärendil/Elwing (Tolkien)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16





	Rage, rage against the dying of the light

Elwing swung her legs. She was sitting in Celeborn’s lap, and he was gently stroking her hair. She hummed a little tune she’d heard once, and liked, and smiled to herself. She pulled at Celeborn’s long sleeve, and put her whole hand into it, pretending for a moment that she only had one hand, like grandpa Beren.  
  
She didn’t remember grandpa Beren, but Eluréd and Elurín had said he’d only had one hand. She giggled to herself, before pulling her hand out the sleeve. She reached up and backwards, and found the sleeve of Celeborn’s other hand; the hand he was stroking her hair with, and pulled at it so that it covered her head. Now she had green hair! She giggled at the thought. How silly! Elves don’t have green hair!  
  
Celeborn shifted, pulled her closer and into a cuddle. Her green hair fell off, and she pouted. Celeborn said something, and she briefly tuned in to listen.  
“I don’t think we’ll find them, after all this time,” said someone. Find who? Elwing didn’t know, and found she didn’t really care. She turned out of the conversation again. Adults were so boring! No one had wanted to play with her for Ages now! She pouted again, but fiercer this time. She wanted someone to play with. Mama always played with her, but she hadn’t seen them today. This was an injustice! She wanted to play and mama would fix it.  
Impatiently, she tugged at Celeborn’s hair. He looked down, and raised an eyebrow. That was Celeborn speak for “what?”

“Where’s mama?” asked Elwing. She didn’t understand why Celeborn grimaced at the question.  
“Shh, little one,” he said.

* * *

When she was five, she met a cat, just outside her new home in the havens of Sirion. “Here kitty!” She’d cooed, reaching out a hand and trying to lure it closer. “here, kitty kitty!” It did, curious but hesitant, and Elwing petted it. This was the first cat she’d met though, and so she was a little rougher than she should’ve been.  
  
The cat yowled in protest, but luckily Galadriel was there. Quickly, Galadriel stooped down next to Elwing, and joined her in petting the cat. “Gentle movements, pitya,” she’d said. Elwing scrunched up her nose, and focused hard on copying Galadriel as exactly as she could.  
“Can we take the kitty home?” asks Elwing, turning big, bright eyes on Galadriel. When she hesitates, Elwing deliberately lets her own lips tremble - just a little. She’d noticed, a while ago, that adults always gave in easier when she did this, and just as predicted, it worked again.  
“Yes all right,” Galadriel had said, “but you must promise to be kind to it!” Elwing had beamed.  
“Promise!”  
  
They brought the cat home, and Elwing loved it - loved watching it, and petting it, and playing with it. She’d spend hours laying in the sun, just because that’s where the cat was. She called it “tufrin”, because it was fluffy. She felt very clever, because she’d asked Galadriel how to say fluffy in gnomish.  
But Tufrin had been old, even when she’d found it, and it died when she was seven. She didn’t quite understand, at first, but knew that it wasn’t coming back, ever again. It was a few months later when she thought of Tufrin, and of her family that she hadn’t seen for years now, and now. Now, she understood, and unbidden, her tears started flowing.  
Her family is dead.

She was crying when she met Eärendil, that day, and when he asked why, she slowly and hesitantly explained Tufrin - and how it’d helped her understand how her own family was gone. She hadn’t looked at him, while she explained, but when she was done - she saw that he was crying.  
“My grandpa is dead too.” He’d whispered. “And my cousin, and my friends.” She’d grasped his hands, knowing then, that she’d found someone she understood.  
“I can’t ever go home again,” they’d realized, simultaneously, that day, grasping hands together, trying desperately to anchor themselves to something in their individual grief. 

They’d stayed there for hours, before reluctantly parting ways, promising to meet each other again; tomorrow. They met rather sooner than that, as they were formally introduced to one another that very same evening. He, a prince of the Ñoldor, and she, a princess of the Sindar.

* * *

She’s ten, when she overhears someone speaking of the Silmaril. No wait, there’s apparently more than one? Weird, she thinks, and presses herself against the wall, hoping to find out more. She does, but not enough. She learns that a Ñoldor had made them, and that The Enemy had stolen them from the Ñoldor.  
She goes and asks Eärendil, because he´s Ñoldor, too, and also because he’s her friend. Sitting down on a cliff next to him, facing the seas, she asks him.  
“What do you know about the Silmarils?”  
He’s only ten too, so he doesn’t know everything, but he _is_ Ñoldor, and so he knows some things.  
“My grandpa’s uncle made them.” He told her. “There are three. My mum, and my grandpa and everyone else came because The Enemy stole them, and my uncle wanted them back.”  
“Your grandpa’s uncle?” She asks.  
“Mhm,” he nods. “Fëanor,” he says - and Elwing’s whole world freezes. She knows that word. She _knows it_. She’d heard papa say it before, before.  
  
She stands up, quickly, and Eärendil looks up at her, askance. He must’ve seen something terrible in her face, because he blanches, but he follows her without hesitation when she storms away. She’s not angry at him, and he knows it, but she is angry. No, she’s not.  
She’s furious, she thinks, and ignores all adults as they call to her.  
  
She goes into her rooms, and Eärendil follows her, and he’s anxious, she can tell, but she’s angry, so angry, and she opens up a chest that she keeps in her room, always, and locked too, and she pulls out it’s singular contents, and Eärendil gasps in surprise, and then she throws it as hard as she can against the wall.  
  
She almost regrets it, immediately, but not really, because her family died because of that thing. But still, she’s been taught that she shouldn’t throw things against walls, that there are better ways to expel anger, ways that won’t damage anything. But that curséd thing isn’t damaged, not really, there’s not a scratch on the necklace, and there’s not a scratch on the silmaril, but.  
“Well.” said Eärendil, flummoxed, and Elwing echoed it, the two staring at where the silmaril lay, a distance away from the Nauglamir. It had popped off, when the necklace hit the wall. 

“Elwing?” Called Celeborn, and the two children looked at eachother panicked, and then each hurried to grasp a piece of the necklace - Elwing the silmaril and Eärendil the Nauglamir.  
“Hurry!” she whispered to him, as they tried to put it back together.  
“I’m trying!” he whispered back, and then pressed his ears down as footsteps drew nearer. They looked up, and gazed at each other for naught but a moment, before they both lunged for the chest. Quickly, they hid the necklace and the stone, and locked the chest.

And just in time too! For Celeborn knocked on the door just then, and then peeked in. “Everything all right?” He’d asked, and then raised an eyebrow when the two dishevelled children nodded quickly. “Have you been fighting?” He asked, becoming stern. They tried to deny it, for it wasn’t true, but he didn’t listen. He scolded them, and told them that they should ever hold fast onto the friendship they have, and not let anything ever get in between them.

They never forgot that moment, nor the lecture, nor did they ever tell Celeborn what had actually transpired that day.

* * *

Elwing had been fifteen, when she first considered Eärendil as a cute boy. He was shorter than her, and he was freckled and gangly and golden haired, and he’d laughed at her joke. None of this was new to her, at the time, but.  
She looked at him, then, and found him lovely. She’d blushed hard, and forced the thought as far out of her mind as she could, and said another joke to cover up her awkwardness.

She had been nineteen, when she’d noticed Eärendil looking at her, and then turning away quickly and blushing. She’d blushed too, because she’d idly wondered how far down his chest his blush reached, and that thought wouldn’t do at all, no not at all! He was her friend, and friends don’t think of each other as thus.

She had been twenty five when she’d looked at him, the both of them full grown, and known with full certainty that she’d never love another as much as she loved him. He was still shorter than her, but he was beautiful, strong and weather taken, for he’d become a sailor. She’d smiled at him, but said nothing, too shy still. There was time, she thought and she didn’t want to rush it.

She had been twenty eight when Eärendil tripped off the deck, and she caught him in her arms. She’d held him for a moment, the two had stared at each other flummoxed, before she laughed so hard that she dropped him into the ocean. He’d surfaced, sputtering, and she kept on laughing helplessly, even as she held out a hand to pull him up onto the harbour again. Elves and men had gathered around, watching the spectacle and laughing at them.

Elwing, breathless with laughter and hopelessly in love, couldn’t contain her emotions, nor indeed, did she want to. She proposed, and Eärendil was so surprised he fell back into the water.  
When he surfaced again he gurgled, mouth not far enough above the water, and then went into a coughing fit - he was so eager to say yes.

* * *

She had been twenty nine, when she had first held her sons. One, she named Elrond, and the other Elros, and then she’d laughed as her husband kissed their toes, and finger, and her own mouth.  
“It suits them,” he’d said, and neither had ever been as happy as they were in that moment.

* * *

The Fëanorians came when she was thirty-five years old. She was alone - her husband was out at sea, and she didn't know where her sons were.  
She thought she had a fairly good idea, given her past experiences, so she ran to her rooms, and gathered the silmaril. She spared no thought for the nauglamir. She knew why the Fëanorians were there, and she would not let them have it, not when they’ killed all her kin.  
She ran and ran, aiming for the door, but there she had to stop - for she’d come face to face with a Fëanorian. Her eyes were wide, but her reactions were quick, and she ran back up the stairs. She knew she was being followed. She ran up and up, and at last came to the children’s bedroom. There, she ran inside and towards the window, and prayed that they hadn’t seen her. She knew she prayed in vain.

Two of them entered, looked at her, and then they flicked their eyes around the room, and their ears twitched - looking for any other threat. There wasn’t any, she knew, they were alone, and she´d stared at them, hatred burning in her eyes and veins.  
She hated them, with all that she is. She hated that they’ve hunted her, she hated that they hunted her father, she hated that they killed her sons, her mother, her brothers. She hated that she can see their pain and self hatred, and most of all she hated that she pitied them.  
She hated them enough to jump, and she grimly rejoiced in their shouts, before she hit the waves.

She’d expected to drown there - or to hit one of the rocks in the water. She expected that the Fëanorians would have found her - after, and that they’d have to pull the silmaril off her corpse.

That wasn’t what happened. No, instead, she felt a wave of, of, of _something_ hit her, encircle her, and change her.

The next thing she had understood was that she was flying, and that the Fëanorians were far below her; staring in genuine confusion - mouths agape. She had squawked at them, victoriously and pettily, and then flown away. She flew until she found upon the horizon a familiar sail, and then she flew until she could land - and then she collapsed into her husband’s arms, transforming back into her natural shape.

They had chosen to go to Valinor, after she told him and the crew what had happened. All of the people aboard had wept the whole way, along the Straight path.

* * *

She’s eighty-five, when the war of wrath is won, and her husband comes home to her. They’d reached Valinor soon after the third kinslaying, and he had persuaded the Valar to fight even as she had persuaded the Amanyar, but they had been forbidden to go back. Eärendil had been allowed a little leeway, in that he was allowed to go back so long as he stayed on Vingilot. This would have made fighting hard, except that the Valar had made the boat capable of flight.  
Her Eärendil was to fly about the night sky, holding the silmaril aloft, and bring hope to the people of Beleriand. He alone had returned, and left again, time and time again during the war, as he made his rounds in the sky.  
On one of his returns home, he told her of how he’d slain Ancalagon the black. He didn’t need to tell her that he’d been praised for it, or that he’d hated the praise, for she could read it in his face. She’d hugged him, and kissed his brow, and pulled on her feather-cloak and flew with him a ways, as he left.  
  
She’s eighty-five, when the war is won at long last, and her husband comes home, tears in his eyes, she opens her arms up, and he folds into her and sobs, and tells her that their sons live, and she hates that she doesn’t need to ask how.  
She mourns, when he tells her that they were also given the choice - and that she would never see Elros ever again.

**Author's Note:**

> Do not go gentle into that good night,  
> Old age should burn and rage at close of day;  
> Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
> 
> Though wise men at their end know dark is right,  
> Because their words had forked no lightning they  
> Do not go gentle into that good night.
> 
> Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright  
> Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,  
> Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
> 
> Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,  
> And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,  
> Do not go gentle into that good night.
> 
> Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight  
> Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,  
> Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
> 
> And you, my father, there on the sad height,  
> Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.  
> Do not go gentle into that good night.  
> Rage, rage against the dying of the light.  
> ~Dylan Thomas


End file.
